


Red Hair, Pale Skin

by gurekure (kurenix)



Series: YGO Ship Olympics - Team Dartship [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anime Spoilers, M/M, i literally cant think of any tags it's 6am and i am so tired, ygoshipolympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 01:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4081954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurenix/pseuds/gurekure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ve never liked pale skin. It reminds you of winter, vanilla ice cream, and the powder-faced women who show up at your father’s parties – all terrible. And pale skin looks especially terrible on Sakaki Yuuya, who lies in that hospital bed like he'll disappear the moment you take his eyes off him.</p>
<p>[Yuuya goes berserk during the Friendship Cup, and Shingo can't seem to leave his bedside.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Hair, Pale Skin

**Author's Note:**

> One of Team Dartship's three submissions for Round 1 of the YGO Ship Olympics (http://ygoshipolympics.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Meets the 'hospital' prompt and 'flowers' challenge, but I managed to fit in 'rooftop' and 'marbles' too, just for fun c:
> 
> Endless thanks to the members of Dartship Academy for making this possible - Kai and Chris for getting me into Arc V and dartshipping in the first place, and Blaze, Crow and Venus for being lovely, talented and wonderful.

You’ve never liked pale skin. It reminds you of winter, vanilla ice cream, and the powder-faced women who show up at your father’s parties – all terrible. And pale skin looks especially terrible on Sakaki Yuuya, who lies in that hospital bed like he'll disappear the moment you take his eyes off him.

It's been two days. They've told you it's normal – normal? you said, incredulous, which made Yuzu flinch, avert her eyes and correct herself: 'it's happened before' – and that Yuuya's bound to wake up soon. Two days without a twitch of an eyelid, then he’ll come round like nothing ever happened at all. But the sun’s leaking through the window blinds on the third morning now and you’re Sawatari Shingo, not a saint!  You’ve never been known for your patience.

You pry two slats of a window blind apart with your fingers, squint at the sun, and hiss at it like it’s done you wrong.

“Stop it, Sawatari!” Yuzu snaps from across the room. “It’s too bright.”

“Let it be bright, then!” you fire back, pulling the cord to retract the window blind completely. Sunlight spills onto Yuuya’s face, and it’s like the light passes right through him. “Aren’t we trying to wake him up?”

“He’s resting. He’ll wake up when he’s ready.”

“You said two days, Hiiragi Yuzu, and those two days have come and gone. To think he has the gall to keep me waiting like this!”

“If you’re tired of waiting, you can leave. It's not like you have to be here.”

Hiiragi Yuzu glowers at you from Yuuya’s bedside with droopy eyes and tangled hair like you've disturbed her slumber, even though you both know she was never asleep in the first place. She’s put down roots in that chair; she doesn’t get up unless Gongenzaka’s around to take her place, marking their shifts with medicine trolleys and the live Friendship Cup broadcast that’s always playing on the television screen in the corner. They keep Yuuya in their combined sight at all times, and Yuzu is clearly determined not to break that streak, not even for a second.

And you? You parked yourself on the windowsill when Yuuya was first warded because there was only one chair in the room, and you haven’t really left since.

“Sakaki Yuuya should be grateful for my presence! Especially since the last time I was in hospital, he didn’t have the decency to visit me at all. Even after the injury he so grievously caused me –”

“He had no reason to be there, and you don’t either!”

“I was there when he lost his marbles, wasn’t I? I was the one who snapped him out of it! I have as much reason to stay as you do.”

( _lost his marbles_ … that’s one way to put it, but when the words exit your mouth you realise immediately how inadequate they are. You can’t match them to the way his eyes flare under the stadium lights, the way he screams so long and loud it drowns out even the skid of his D-Wheel veering off the track. It takes more than lost marbles to pull that insanity out of him, you’re sure, the kind that distorts his voice and makes his hair stand on end, pulsing from his body in dark waves that stuns the crowd into silence.

Maybe the sight of that, the sight of Sakaki Yuuya crumbling like the wick of a candle in red and purple fire – maybe that’s the reason you can’t leave.)

“Well,” Yuzu says, “if only you could repeat that trick.”

With that, she folds her arms across her ribs and sinks into her chair – she’s too tired to keep arguing with you. Heading back to the windowsill once again (your tailbone is really starting to hurt, maybe this was a bad idea after all) you sit and watch Yuuya to see if the sun really will warm him back to life. It doesn’t. The Synchro dimension’s sun is City-tinged, glass walls and windows catching its light and turning it subtly bluer than what you’re used to, and this makes his skin even paler in comparison.

You pull the blind down and you let him sleep. Yuuya looks terrible now, but not nearly as terrible as he did two days ago.

 

 

Time stretches. The first round of the Friendship Cup continues, mostly as a faint background buzz from the TV screen, but you pay attention when the Lancers are riding. You’ve all been tasked to reach Jack Atlas at the end of the tournament, but you’re getting knocked out quick; not everyone takes to the bikes as easily as Kurosaki Shun does. Gongenzaka can barely drive in a straight line for more than, and having Yuuya in the hospital during Yuzu’s duel means she never stood a chance. The only ones left now are Akaba Reiji, Kurosaki, Serena, that one ninja guy, and the Yuuya lookalike you found Yuzu with – Yuugo’s having the time of his life out there, but the moment he wins his duel he barges into the ward and drags his surrogate sister away from her chair and out the door. She’s a much less frequent visitor after that, and looks much more rested whenever you see her.

You yourself have been robbed of yet another victory – you’re starting to wonder if you’re fated for this, if some playwright in the sky has banished you to the supporting cast of someone else’s grand tale, but you refuse to succumb to these weak-minded thoughts. You are a hero, not calefare! – and you use this idle time to fill Yuuya’s room with flowers. Your own ward in Standard was lined wall to wall with them, your father made sure of that, and it’s the only thing you can think of to do now. So you head down to the nearby marketplace to clear out as many florists as possible, where you swiftly discover that “Don’t you know who I am?!” is not the best haggling strategy in Synchro. It takes the help of Crow and his kids to get less than half of what you want, but when the others see the baskets piling up by the bedside they start following your lead.

Everyone's surprised to see you so concerned about someone else. To be honest, you are too.

In the days you spend by Yuuya’s bedside, you find out exactly what it’s happened before means. You learn about the swirling darkness in his head which you don’t have green pajamas and mystic crystals to keep at bay anymore. You learn that before means twice, but it’s much, much less than what it could have been because he wrests control every other time through sheer will and desperation. You learn, you imagine, how scared he’d become. You get a little scared yourself.

The last thing you learn about is Yuuya’s second soul. His name is Yuuto (what a shocker!) and he was part of the XYZ resistance before he became a bright blue light in Yuuya’s arms and dissipated into thin air. This explains a lot, especially regarding why he chose that particular moment to go berserk: when Dennis Macfield was pushed to the brink of defeat, drew Polymerisation from the depths of his deck, and revealed himself a traitor.

(He went a bit mad then too, didn’t he? The difference was that his brand of crazy comes from a can, mass-produced in a way only rigorous indoctrination could manage – the smile he cracks in your memory is exactly that of Shiunin Sora’s. From your seat in the stands you see Akaba Reiji straighten, eyes narrowed, ready to force the duel to a halt before Dennis starts World War Fusion a tad too early. But then Yuuya snaps in turn, a _real_ snap, and Reiji just settles back down to enjoy the show.You jolt upright and lunge for the railing, you can't help yourself, but habit makes you heed the sharp glance from your President and stay where you are as Yuuya thoroughly curb-stomps Dennis into the asphalt, his face twisted in a grin even crazier than Academia.)

“So… that’s it?” you ask. “No more Yuuto? He’s just gone?”

“No.”

The glare you receive from Kurosaki Shun radiates so much indignation it sucks the air from your lungs. “Yuuto’s not gone.”

When he leaves the room, his words ring in your ears. Yuuto’s not gone. There’s no way he could know, you think, but at the same time you can’t bring yourself to not believe him.

If Yuuto’s still there, Yuuya has to be too. That knowledge calms you enough to leave the room for the first time in quite a while, and you head up to the hospital rooftop for some fresh air. From here you can look straight down into the dueling stadium, and the lights are blinding enough that if you squint you can pretend Yuuya’s in there – standing up on the seat while riding, pulling ridiculous acrobatics on the handlebars, bringing the house down like no one in Synchro’s ever done before.

 

 

“Sakaki Yuuya needs to be awake in two days.”

“What?”

“That’s when his second match is scheduled, first thing in the morning.”

“How’s he even going to duel?”

“We’ll find out when he wakes up.”

It’s the fifth day, and Akaba Reiji has brought his brother with him. Reira makes an immediate beeline for Yuuya, his large, anxious eyes searching vainly for signs of life, but Reiji doesn’t even spare a glance in favour of getting down to business. You’re used to taking orders from him; he’s your President, it’s how your families work. Reiji hasn’t taken his eyes off yours for a second, and the message is clear: it’s all on you.

“Our numbers in the Friendship Cup are running low, so we can’t afford to lose anyone. Sakaki has a particularly good chance of reaching the final round.”

“I can’t just wake Yuuya up whenever I want–”

“You managed it earlier, didn’t you?”

“That’s different!”

“How did you do it, Sawatari? Have you forgotten?”

(Of course you haven’t. Dennis slams into the barricade so hard from the force of Rebellion Dragon’s final attack he makes a dent in the metal, his D-Wheel exploding in a shower of sparks and flying debris around him. Yuuya’s own bike trundles gently to a stop on the other end of the stadium, but its rider can’t even stand anymore; he crawls off the seat, rolls onto his back, and screams at the sky. That’s when you vault over the railing, overtaking Yuzu and Gongenzaka so you’re the first to see him up close, his limbs wrapped in darkness,his eyes consumed by fire –)

“Perhaps you could try again.”

You don’t say a word to answer his question, but Reiji’s known you long enough to read your face.

 

 

 

The room is empty. Reiji’s left, the sun has set, and no one else is here.

Yuuya always looks the worst at night, because that’s when the lighting is the least forgiving. The City is a world of blue without the sun, and it’s never the best idea to have red, green, and cyan together. In the lights of the Tops towers you can really see how his red hair washes out his skin till it’s practically indistinguishable from the bedsheets: white as winter.It looks terrible, and it makes you very, very angry.

For the first time since Yuuya was admitted to hospital, you get off the windowsill and sit on the chair next to his bed. You’ve been hanging around the walls the whole time because a part of you believes Yuzu when she says _you shouldn’t be here_ , but now you’re alone and you don’t give a damn. Yuuya needs to wake up, and you’re going to try.

_What did you do, Sawatari?_

You lean over him so you see him up close, like you did five days ago in the stadium, except then he was frothing at the mouth in agony and now he’s nothing at all. Then, just like five days ago – just like ages ago, when you first met, when you didn’t know how much he’d become to you – you grip one of his hands in both of yours. He’s paper-white and brittle to the touch and you want him back. You want him back so badly.

_Perhaps you could try again._

“Did you hear Reiji just now, Yuuya?”

Your mouth is very close to his now.

“You aren’t going to make your audience wait, are you?”

His fingers twitch. You jump back in a panic, staggering backwards to a more respectable distance, but find that you can’t pull away completely. He’s got his hand on yours now, and he isn’t letting go.

Sakaki Yuuya finds your gaze with those deep red eyes back to normal at last, his lips turning upwards in the faintest of smiles.

“Never.”

 

 

Yuzu was right – once he’s awake, it’s like nothing ever happened. If Yuuya’s suffered any irreversible mental damage (at least, more than he already has), he doesn’t show it; he spends the next day cheering up his friends, mocking you for the excess of flower baskets, and laughing like he’s got no cares in the world.

When he’s strong enough to stand on his own, which doesn’t take too long at all, you bring him to the rooftop. He falls in love with the view immediately, marvelling at the cityscape and how cool the stadium looks from afar. This is what you’ve missed, these past five days. You’ve missed him more than you could ever have imagined.

“You owe me a debt of gratitude, Sakaki Yuuya,” you proclaim. “Not just for this excellent view, but for snapping you back to your senses! Twice, might I add!”

“Twice? You mean in the stadium too? Sorry, Sawatari, but I don’t remember a thing about that duel.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah! It happens. But I think I’ll take you at your word,” Yuuya says, and his smile is sincere as his eyes meet yours. “Thank you.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you turn away and pretend to enjoy the view instead.

“So... how’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Wake me up! What did you do, slap me? Pour water on my face?”

“No, I–”

“I bet it was a confession! A dramatic outpouring of love with a big ol’ kiss at the end. That’s classic! Wait, oh my god, did you really–?”

Your face must have been priceless, because Yuuya takes one look at it and laughs so hard he doubles over. You quickly realise that getting him to stop would be an exercise in futility, so you just start laughing too – his laugh is as bright and warm as the sun Synchro doesn’t have.

And you never answer, because you wish it was a confession. You wish it was a kiss. Instead, when you saw him lying there, yelling and crying like he would never stop, all you could think about was yourself. How you ended your last duel with Yuuya crouched on the ground, shaking with fury, ready to lash out at everything and everyone for the injustice, for the failure, for the shame of it all. So what you did was say what he said to you then:

“Hey, Yuuya. The crowd’s really excited, you know.”

It’s sad that you weren’t lying. The people of Synchro aren’t like Standard’s at all: they live and breathe competition, and to them total defeat is something to be relished. The more violent, the better. After Dennis’ bike crashed and wrecked his body in the process, the spectators sent off his stretcher with riotous applause.

This is how Yuuya stopped screaming, and how the fire went out in his eyes: he heard the crowd. This is why, in the twenty seconds before he passed out, he willed himself upright, spread his hands to the audience, and took a bow. And you let him, because you’ve been pale-faced at your father’s parties before – you know exactly what it’s like to stand in front of a crowd that knows all the hateful things you’ve done and smile, and wave, and smile, and wave.


End file.
